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Pike, Baked

Baked pike stuffed with veal forcemeat, chervil, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pike, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and scale the pike, removing the gills.

  2. Stuff the fish with veal forcemeat and chopped chervil.

  3. Coil the fish and fasten the tail in the mouth.

  4. Brush the fish with warm butter and season well.

  5. Coat with beaten egg and seasoned breadcrumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until cooked through.

  2. Serve with brown sauce or gravy.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Chervil + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together262 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Chervil + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pike
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the lean, flaky flesh.
Veal forcemeat
Adds moisture and richness inside the fish as it cooks and firms.
Beaten egg
Binds the breadcrumbs to the fish and helps the coating set and brown.
Seasoned breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the surface of the fish.
Warm butter
Adds fat that keeps the surface moist and encourages browning in the oven.
Chopped chervil
Adds a delicate, herbal aroma to the forcemeat stuffing.

The step that matters

Baking until cooked through. Pike is very lean, so its proteins tighten and squeeze out moisture once overcooked, leaving dry, tough flesh. Bake only until the flesh turns opaque and flakes easily at the thickest point.

Swap the chervil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, egg, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, egg, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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